


The Old Days

by holmartell



Category: This is England - All Media Types, This is England 86
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Just pure misery, Nostalgia, Not completely platonic friendships, Relationship Study, Retrospective, Yearning, childhood friendships, unrequited love OR IS IT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25611616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holmartell/pseuds/holmartell
Summary: During Combo’s sentencing for Mick’s manslaughter, a heavily pregnant and depressed Lol reflects on their complex relationship and what led them to this point.
Relationships: Lol & Combo, Lol/Combo, Lol/Milky (mentioned), Woody/Lol (mentioned)
Kudos: 3





	The Old Days

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been lurking on AO3 for years, reading wonderful fic and leaving kudos, all the while writing my own stuff in the notes app of my phone and being too shy to post it. But, because my horrible goblin brain has convinced me that the relationship between these two is THE pinnacle of romance, I’ve finally made the leap! My main goal was to just analyse the shit out of their dynamic across the years, whilst trying to fix some of the incongruities/inconsistencies between film and TV shows. Enjoy!!

She is sitting in court for the sentencing, swollen and uncomfortable on the hard wood benches, and she is looking at him as he stands in the dock. His hair is long again, how she always preferred it, and despite everything, he looks good. At peace. He looks how she knows she should feel, but she can’t. She can’t feel good with him up there in the grey uniform, even though he had kissed her forehead and told her, truly, that it was his choice.

Kelly didn’t want to be there, and Woody is at work, so her only comfort is Chrissy, who is gripping her hand with white-knuckles and ferocity. Her belly shifts, and she feels the baby kick out violently, sending her spinning. Up on the stand, he gives her the smallest of smiles, which she wishes she could be reassured by, but instead she feels sick to her stomach. She tightens her hold on her mum’s fingers. When she leaves, she will throw up on the pavement.

“All rise”, and she tries to, but she can barely raise herself from her seat. She hears nothing but the dual heartbeats, and then the words ‘voluntary manslaughter’, and then the sentence, which is years. She tries to look at him as he is taken away, and it hurts right down in her soul. He deserves to be seen, at least. He deserves so much. But he just smiles again, and she hates how much he loves her, because she doesn’t deserve it. She can’t smile back.

—

They met when she was fourteen. He was sixteen. His family had moved eastwards from Liverpool for his dad’s work. He was a docker and they needed to be near the water. So they chose the town, and Combo came scowling into her life. The wild boy, with the voice it took her weeks to understand. Woody met him first, and brought him into the gang. Lol smiled when she wondered if Woody was annoyed at himself for introducing her to a new potential suitor, when she was already surrounded by so many who wanted her.

They got him out of old fashioned flares and scruffy corduroy into fresh Ben Shermans and Fred Perrys. Lol was the one who first shaved his head. It had been a violent night in her house, so she went to his, and took Kelly with her. Kelly, twelve and angry, slept on the sofa, appreciating the quiet, as Lol cut Combo’s hair in dim candle light. She allowed herself a moment to wind her fingers through it, in the nape of his neck, around his ears, until she cut it away and shaved the rest, and it fell to the floor like leaves.

That was the last time he looked like a boy. A week later, Woody tattooed the cross between his eyes, and he became different. Older, more confident, knowing that he was one of them, that he had a place. Later, she couldn’t help but think that if they hadn’t introduced him to the lifestyle, he would never have become the person he became, done those horrible things, changed so much of all their lives. Woody tries to convince her that Combo’s problems were more complex than a pair of dull scissors and a rusty, inky needle, but it still keeps her up, to think of what he would’ve been like if they had left him alone.

When they two of them  _ were  _ alone, she could catch a glimpse. Those were the memories she clung to. Woody had emboldened him until he was loud and obnoxious, always trying to be the funniest, the toughest, the most likeable all at once. With her, he was quiet and shy, but secure enough to revert to the boyish version of himself she had first met. They had recognised something in each other from that very first moment, and were drawn in by it. No longer skinhead and skingirl, just Combo and Lol.

Milky had learnt enough over the years. Not all, but enough. He was a born listener with an open face, who she could scream at for hours and hours and he would be there at the end to make her a cup of tea. Woody didn’t know anything, but that was intentional. He was a safe haven of happiness for her, and she didn’t want to ruin that. With him, she could pretend, could act like the happy person she wanted to be, and it would, for a while, be real.

But when Combo came to her with a broken nose, the stories about his dad came spilling out as quick and hot as the blood. As she cleaned him up, he told her the worst, the most gory and disgusting of it, and for the first time she felt able to do the same. Stories that no one had ever heard, that made him cry to hear her tell, until they were crying together under the flickering kitchen lights. She knew then that they shared something that was indescribable to anyone else.

Her dad always told her, every time, that she could have it the easy way or the hard way. On one particular night, she was so, so tired of it that all remaining energy burst from her in protest. It was one of the worst. Usually, afterwards, she would simply black out into deep and silent sleep, or climb into bed with Kelly just to have someone to hold. But on that night, the house itself was making it hard to breathe, so she shimmied out of the window, with coat and jumper on over her stained pyjamas, and into the frosty street. She didn’t want Milky’s empty platitudes, she just wanted Combo, to tell her that he knew how she felt, and to know that she could believe him.

He didn’t greet her with surprise, but seeing the look on her face, pulled her into his arms instead, and held her there until she stopped shaking from the cold and the anger. She gladly received one of his t-shirts and a pair of his underwear, and fell asleep in his bed, curled in on herself. He lay beside her, over the covers, watching over her as her hand twitched in his, refusing to let go even in sleep.

Before her eyes closed, he had kissed her forehead - as was his habit - and spoke. She was so tired she could barely process the words, but she had understood, and nodded.

“I’m gonna go sort him out, okay?”

When she woke, it was dawn, and he was gone. She knew she had to get home before her parents realised she wasn’t in her bed, so she had put the pyjamas back on, nauseous at how unclean she felt wearing them. She walked home, alone in the foggy morning streets. As she approached the door, a figure sitting in the alley caught her attention. It was Combo, swimming in his own blood.

He wailed without tears when she touched his face. He kept saying that he had let her down, and repeated the words over and over as she put him in the backseat of his own car and drove him to the hospital. In the bed, he looked delicate in his sleep, and she sat with him and watched the bruises blossom. When he was confronted with Mick’s corpse all those years later, he hit all the swings he had missed before, and relished all of them, sending punch after punch into the body as if he wanted to bore through the skin and destroy him from the inside out. If she had been in her right mind, Lol thought she would’ve enjoyed the sight; of him getting revenge for her, for himself, for everyone who has suffered at the hands of evil men.

Not long after he got out of hospital, they had sex for the first time, both drunk and misty-eyed, with no time for first kisses. Two years of romantic friendship leading to the inevitable consummation. He had encouraged her to get on top, hands on her thighs with a deep gentleness, like he was scared that she would crumble if he touched her in the wrong way. He clung to her back, kisses placed wherever he could reach. She held his head to her bare chest, cradling him, and he cried like he didn’t deserve her. Rough, large hands unexpectedly delicate, attending over her every detail. He went down on her without hesitation, with enthusiasm. In the half-light, she could watch the tattoos descend his body. She could feel safe with arms around her in his lap, enjoying the freedom in knowing he’d never let her fall.

She didn’t know what to think about that night, looking back, mostly because she didn’t have time to, because a couple of weeks later he was going to prison for something he didn’t do. God, he had a habit of doing that. Woody had slapped him on the back, and sent him into the interview room, Combo - despite being the older of the two - all too ready to sacrifice himself to impress the younger. The night before he left, they spoke outside the working men’s club, the smoke of their fags shining under the fluorescent outdoor light.

They had hugged, her arms around his neck as she often did, but when he moved in to kiss her, she pulled away without knowing why. A kiss on his cheek had sufficed, and then she was walking in the other direction, with hot tears leaving mascara streaks on her face. “Do you want me to walk you home?” He had called after her, but she had shook her head, waving a hand as she went, feeling heartbroken and resenting it.

She missed him more than she could stand, for a while. Especially on the nights where she got it the hard way, and she wanted nothing more than for him to be there to comfort her. Woody wasn’t the same, but she fell into his arms just as easily. He didn’t listen very well, but she liked to hear him talk, so they began dating quite comfortably. Days could go by without either of them thinking about Combo, and she allowed herself to laugh at Woody’s jokes and play at happiness. Then, he was released, and like the hurricane he was, he upended everything.

From being in their teens, to him coming back when they were both in their twenties, things were always going to be different, but she was astonished from the moment he crashed the party by the darkness in his eyes, like flint and cold water. More muscular, less vulnerable, more vicious, and carrying himself like he didn’t have anything to prove anymore. His lack of vulnerability was frightening, and she didn’t recognise his face anymore, not in the same way. When the bile began to pour from his lips, she wanted to scream and beat his chest, forcing the hate out of him and returning him to what he used to be. She didn’t know what had happened in prison to make him this way and she didn’t want to, all she knew was that the love-heart and fairy cake tattoos had been joined by a swastika, and - no matter how soft and gentle his voice became when he spoke to her - she couldn’t see him the same. He was no longer hers.

When he left again, as he always seemed to do, she didn’t miss him. He had done things that Milky could never forgive, and she knew it wasn’t her place to forgive on his behalf. Only he could understand what had been done to him, so she watched in silence as his sisters rubbed aloe onto his scars and he cried like a boy. He sometimes came to her when she was fucking Woody, and later when she was fucking Milky, and the pang in her lower abdomen told her that she had yet to let all of him go. She could lie back, one of them on top of her, and be perfectly bored, a small and shameful part of her wishing it was him, underneath her.

She had been thinking about him more and more frequently in the days before the killing. Once her dad returned, the thought of him became relentless. When Woody refused to listen and pushed her away with all his might, she thought of the late nights Combo had spent with her, talking about everything and nothing just to pass the nighttime hours away until it was safe and light. When Milky cowered in the bedroom as Mick spat in her face downstairs, she wondered what the other two would’ve done. Woody would have encouraged him to leave, his hands raised and head bowed. She knew Combo would’ve smashed his head against the brick. She fantasised about that.

And as if he could read her thoughts, he returned when she needed him most, kicking down the door and doing what he did best, giving up everything for her. He had always been a cyclone. As quick as she knew it, he had smeared himself with Mick’s blood and the two of them sat together, both covered in it like lions after a feast, huddled against the radiator; her, wrapped in his coat but shivering uncontrollably, him with his arms around her. Just like old times.

—

She thinks that it might have been easier if she hated him with all her heart, like she had done after what he did to Milky. That she could’ve watched him save her with no more than grudging gratitude, and watch him be sent down with apathy. But it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy at all. In fact, it was the hardest thing she’d ever done, because he had circled back around to being the boy she loved again.No more darkness and cold; instead, a sadness and softness that was killing her. Sleeves pulled down over shameful tattoos. Full cheeks. Long hair.

“Let me do a good thing.” He had said, and she nodded into his neck, permitting it, sinking back into him. She knew, then, that he had changed for the better. He was seeking a forgiveness that no one could give, he had committed sins that no one could absolve; not her, not Milky, not himself. All he could do was put some good out in the world - as much as he could - to make up for all the bad.

So when he stands in the dock, and the judge gives the sentence, he closes his eyes with relief. Years of potential penance, the punishment he craved. A chance to remake and rebuild himself in the only ways he knew how. His ‘I love you’s - not whispers but screams - fill her brain until she wants to cry out, to admit the truth, to join him in the dock, in the cuffs, in the cell, so they can face the consequences together, inseparable to the end. To tell him she loves him too, she always has, and that she’s sorry, and that she’s grateful.

But before she can wrap her head around the scene before her, he is being led away, and he is out of her life again.


End file.
